Christina Flynn

Despite the various market headwinds facing commercial real estate this past year, Fannie Mae had a very productive run in its ongoing support of U.S. housing. At the helm of its multifamily activity is Christina Flynn, who oversees the multifamily delegated underwriting and servicing loan process for all non-delegated loans.

Fannie Mae Multifamily acquired more than $55 billion in loans in 2024 through its Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS) program, and promised an additional $1.2 billion of total forward commitments in 2024 — a big increase from $326 million in 2023. It has also committed $4 billion in net equity through Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) since 2018, both creating and preserving affordable housing for low-income households.

The last few months have seen a flurry of activity on a very different front, of course. In March, when William Pulte was named director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — which oversees and regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — he fired most of both companies’ boards and named himself chairman of both. Just under a month later, Pulte announced that since his swearing in, Fannie Mae had fired over 100 employees for unethical conduct. 

Exactly what any of this means for Fannie’s future is still speculation, but U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently hinted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be included in a new U.S. sovereign wealth fund, and conjecture has been growing for months that the Trump administration is looking into privatizing both agencies.

For now, there’s no denying the power Fannie Mae has, or how significant its continued overall influence on the commercial real estate financing industry is. 

This past year, the agency continued to provide value to multifamily lenders, borrowers and the market by being a consistent and reliable source of financing. It also drove innovation in the solutions it provided. Case in point: Fannie Mae leveraged its sponsor-dedicated workforce housing product with its near-stabilization product to preserve affordability on workforce housing — providing liquidity and low-cost financing to multifamily borrowers while also expanding access to affordable housing for the nation’s renters.